Conventionally, a content providing service is carried out wherein digital contents such as music contents or image contents are loaded from a server in which the contents are stored into an information terminal such as a PC (Personal Computer) or a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) owned by a user so that the contents are utilized on the information terminal. Further, the user can rip contents recorded on a recording medium such as a CD (Compact Disk) to copy the contents on a hard disk or the like of the PC and utilize the contents on the PC. Furthermore, also it is possible for the user to transfer the contents acquired by downloading, ripping or the like to a PD (Portable Device) owned by the user so that the contents are utilized on the PD.
If it is assumed that the user can freely utilize a content downloaded or ripped in such a manner as described above, then this is sometimes undesirable from the point of view of copyright protection. Therefore, copyright management is conventionally performed by providing a license corresponding to a content and setting right information of a reproduction-permission time number or a copying-permission time number of a content to the license such that reproduction control or transfer control of the content is performed based on the right information set to the license (for example, refer to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-312211 and Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-296486)
However, where a PC or a PD which is a transfer destination of the content performs copyright management using a method different from that described above, a PC or the like of a transfer source must transfer the content with a format ready for the copyright management method so that reproduction control of the content can be performed by the transfer destination.
Therefore, the present invention has been made in view of such a problem as described above, and it is an object of the present invention to provide a content processing apparatus, a content processing method and a computer program wherein a content can be transferred using a method corresponding to that according to a copyright management method in an information processing apparatus of a transfer destination.